Friday, August 21, 2009

Christianity might disgust me because of its demands of blind obedience and submission, and its disdain for people who are not contemplated in ”god’s plan”, or if they are, are seen condescendingly and over the shoulder. However, I have to admit none of the abuses of Christianity hold no sway over those of the “religion of peace”, the Islam

In broad terms, it can be said that Islam is similar to Christianity in terms of doctrine. Both require obedience to a god, who has revealed to his followers through “sacred texts” that are “his word”, which is interpreted by spiritual leaders and given to the people for they to comply with it, unless they want to suffer horrible torments through eternity.

The problem with Islam is that its sacred texts’ interpretation is done with a much more totalitarian mentality than the one that is done with Christianity. Because of the enlightenment and secular and scientific advancement, the christian church and its power have had to retreat to live room for positions that give priority to people’s rights and liberties, science and knowledge. But apparently that didn’t happened with Islam. Islam remained in some kind of obscurantism that his shocking to find in the XXI century. The cases of human rights violation in Islamic societies are many in all levels of that society. Its followers’ fanatism is outrageous because of how extreme it is.

Christianity is not free from fanatics, but these fanatics usually are reduced to particular people, and sometimes groups of people that hardly do something else that protesting against whatever the think is wrong or trying to push religion in legislature. However, islamic fanatics go much further. From the husband who kills his wife or any woman relative for “dishonoring the family”, to the government that retaliates with massive force against its own citizens who protest, Islamic countries don’t seem to care about their citizens, but only compliance of its laws. In other words, the state does not serve the people, but the people serve the state, which is a definition very similar to that of totalitarism. And yet, Islam hypocritically presents itself as “the religion of peace”. And maybe the worst thing of the issue is that occidental liberalism, which fought for people’s rights and liberties, usually tries to forgive the crimes and abuses committed in the name of “the religion of peace”

The XX chromosome curseMaybe the most remarkable thing about Islam is the oppresion against women. This goes from the mandatory use of the burqa and other clothes that cover the woman’s entire body, to the laws that condone the assassination of women only for dating people of different faith

In Islam, the segregation of genders is seen normally, but the treatment of women as a second-class citizen doesn’t end there. In Islamic societies it’s normal for a man to hit his wife for disobeying them. The man can get a divorce whenever he wants it, while women don’t have that same right. Often women cannot choose who to get married, which is pretty much what used to happen in western society just 100 years ago, but at least western society evolved. And a couple of things that outrage me are, if a woman is raped, she needs to have 4 male witnesses to corroborate her testimony. Otherwise, she might end in jail or stoned to death; and allowing men to marry underage girls as young as nine years old, with all the freedom to have sex with them. And I don’t think there is anything worse than female circumcision.

These are only some of the characteristics Islam has regarding women. Such practices are usually found in the politically incorrect media that is able to criticize Islam. There is where the left, specially the European left, fails, that left that once fought for the people’s rights and liberties, but now allows those concepts to be stepped on by a religion’s rights and liberties that are no more than going back to the medieval ages.

Unfortunately these cases are extending not only to Europe, which is where muslim immigrants usually land, but to the USA and Canada.

Woman before being stoned to death after been found guilty of adultery under Islamic Law.

Christians and other religionsDifferent religions usually are incompatible with each other, but most of them don’t go to the extreme to insult or call for the destruction of the others, which is the best example of pots accusing pans. Christianity can be pretty nonsensical, but gets allong very well with the Jewish community and often tries to get along with other religions (except wicca) and even Islam (well, excepting the invasion to the middle east by the United States, which had many other motivations). Muslims, on the other hand, don’t seem to perceive anything wrong in murdering or jailing other religion’s members, which is unthinkable in western societies. But this intolerance is not limited to that. There are many cases of muslims attacking christian churches. I have no sympathy for churches, but destroying them is not a solution in any case in a modern society.

A particular group that has been under attack are the Bahá'í, a young religion born not very long ago and that preaches unity among religions. So far, it seems like a peaceful religion that doesn't get into anyboy else's life (you don't hear about baha'i knocking at your door trying to convert you, shooting down doctors who perform abortions, or flying into buldings). Predictably, the "religion of peace" could not leave them alone. The bahai have faced persecution, specially in Iran, for being considerated apostates of Islam. Up to this day, the persecution against the Bahai continues by the "religion of peace".

ViolenceMaybe the relationship between violence and Islam is the most difficult to address given that it’s easy to fall in which might seem as arguing that every muslim is violent, which is in no way true. But it’s hard to forget the uproar that the uproar that was caused by the publication of a Mohammed cartoon in a Danish newspaper. This started a series of protests that had as a consequence the burning of different European countries’ flags, attacks to european buildings and even the burning of Danish embasies in Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

I don’t want to think I have a too high standard for human beings in general, but I believe that no rational person commits such acts of violence just because of a cartoon. I can understand pacific protests, boycotts to the institution that allowed such cartoons and maybe the burning of flags. Burning down an embassy is too much. And that’s even worse when muslim religious leaders were encouraging such behavior, which shows hot official and accepted violence can be

As with christianity and judaism, Islam contains lots of nonsense in its doctrine. However, the zeal that demands from its followers, the fundamentalism in which what they consider the message of god is taught and the strong relationship between Islam and politics in the countries with a majority of muslims, make this belief alarming for the rest of citizens and shouldn’t be accepted in these times.